Theism is about as non-falsifiable as can be, since it usually posits omnipresence, omniscience, and/or omnipotence in the entity, which places it close to identity with the universe itself, leaving no place from which to test it.

Frank: my iPhone, if stimulated in certain ways by test devices, will tell stories and flash pictures, sing songs, and bring up old traces of past conversations. That is no proof that it is, itself, the source of those pictures and communications, of course. The notion is too ridiculous. My humorous metaphor was intended to make the point that ruling out a separate source of ability and perception, in a nontheistic but spiritually inclusive model, leaves you with a greatly complex task of finding the ghost in the machine's components. And it requires that you reject a good deal of circumstantial evidence and experiential description in order to cleave to your model. Amongst all that experience are a few "white crows" that (it seems to me) are sufficiently robust to refute the proposition that "all crows are blacK" (i.e., all thought stems from chemicals).

Bill: I quite agree that there is a major question at the front end of the whole subject, namely whether human physical structure monitors and causes functions (including thoughts, hopes, imaginings, etc. and the rich matrix of thought in all its forms) or whether there is something to the "separate I" model which informs all belief systems that touch on reincarnation, separation of self from body, and also offers an explanation for some other border phenomena such as apparent telepathic bonds, for example.

Your quibble about affirmative action, Bill, is just grumpy. I did not say that consciousness was exempt from any testing. I said, and have said often before, and say now again, that testing would have to take into account the fact that repetitive behavior is not a characteristic of consciousness and that unlike moilecules, consciousness can self-define, and plastically self-form in ways that no molecular structure can do. Such testing would also have to take into account the phenomena found in thought that include such things as images of the past (correct ones) and self-imposed delusions of the past, both of which are found aplenty in any mind; intention and its impact on perception; imaginary forms and postulated scenarios and their influence on awareness; ability (as distinguished from reactive response to stimuli) and what, if anythihng, increases or decreases it. Not to mention the whole field of "data" and what constitutes mind-data, what sorts or kinds there are, how they work and why they go awry and produce self-destructive or dramatically dysfunctional computations.

SOME of these things will, I suppose, be found to be strongly coupled with biochemical phenomena, as surely as eating lead paint can mess up your brain and make you feel crazy. THe assertion I have a strong inclination to reject is that that "some" is the whole set.

So far as I have seen, no scientific process to date has offered a convincing argument that the wetware complex governs the whole set of "thought", and my sense so far is there is a lot of evidence to the effect that it does not, by a long shot.

For example, the many many cases of suggested healing (placebo effect) where nothing was done to the wetware but the insertion of an idea which nevertheless seemed to stimulate self-correction in the organism, sometimes from major symptoms. Such phenomena clearly militate for a model which includes the seniority of function over structure in ways not yet much addressed by science.

A